Liu Ding

Liu Ding (simplified Chinese: 刘鼎; born 1976, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province) is a Chinese artist and curator based in Beijing. Liu’s artistic practices range from installation, painting, photography, and theatre set design and production, whereas his professional skills vary from magazine editorial, television production, and curatorial work.

Exhibitions and Artistic Practices

Constantly challenging the conventional context of artists’ status, art work, workers involving in the production of art work, galleries and museums, collectors, audiences, and so on, Liu Ding’s creation and reflection are often theoretical and involved with critical thinking. After abandoning formal education and moving to Shanghai, Liu Ding started up Pink Studio in 2001, where he continued his artistic practice. In 2011, he co-founded Office of Art and Theory with Carol Yinghua Lu in Beijing. His works have been exhibited in numerous art institutions including the Turner Museum and the Arnolfini Gallery in the UK, the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria, the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Norway, the Sao Paolo National Museum of Art in Brazil, the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, the RasquArt Center in Switzerland, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Italy, the Seoul Municipal Museum of Art in Korea, the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, USA, the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the Shanghai Contemporary Museum of Art, and the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China. His conceptual art project Liu Ding’s Store, begun in 2008, is a continuing project that discusses and presents the various visible and invisible mechanisms in the art system for the formation of value. Liu was chosen in 2009 as a representative of China at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Little Movements: Self-Practices in Contemporary Art, the project he and Carol Yinghua Lu initiated and curated together, was exhibited at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Shenzhen in September 2011, and will go on an international tour from 2012. He also co-curated the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, entitled Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, Not a World. His first solo exhibition in America opened at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in July 2012.

Taking part in The Tanks: Art in Action to celebrate the opening of the new space of Tate Modern, Liu Ding was selected to be one of the participant artists for the symposium Inside/Outside: Materialising the Social in July 2012, to conduct his first “non-theatrical performance”, I simply Appear in the Company of…, a non-theatrical performance that involves Mr.Liu, Carol Yinghua Lu, and Marko Daniel, who is a long-term friend of Liu Ding’s and a curator, discussing the artistic and curatorial practice of Liu Ding in the absence of the artist himself. This project will be continued during the Taipei Biennale 2012.